One well known method of making fibers from a molten inorganic material such as glass utilizes a bushing having a plurality of orifice tips. The molten material flows from the bushing out through the orifice tips forming cones at the ends of the tips. When the temperature of the molten material at these cones is properly controlled, continuous fibers can be drawn from the tips of the cones.
One prior art manner of controlling the temperature of the cones is to place a tube adjacent to the cones and to flow a cooling medium such as water through the tube at a rate necessary to maintain desired cone temperature. Such cooling tubes must be supported in such a manner that their location with respect to the adjacent orifice tips can be controlled and held at a desired position.
The environment around the cooling tubes, including the area around the cooling tube supports, is harsh in terms of high temperature, corrosiveness caused by the temperature, volatiles from the molten material, and water spray typically used around such a bushing. This harsh environment deteriorates the cooling tubes requiring one or more to be replaced. It is desirable to replace cooling tubes without excessively cooling down the bushing. Becasue of the size of the bushing and the harsh environment, the support system for the cooling tubes would desirably be designed to permit one person to replace one or more cooling tubes in a minimum amount of time. Frequently the ends of the cooling tubes are bent downward a substantial amount to facilitate feeding and removing the cooling fluid. Furthermore, the bushings are usually arranged so close together that the cooling tubes could not be removed by pulling the tubes straight out in a horizontal plane because of interference with an adjoining bushing or other hardware located between the bushings.
Various means of supporting the cooling tubes in the past include flip down (crankshaft) supports and special holding tools to allow one person to hold all of the tubes in place while another person removed the supports and replaced one or more defective tubes. With these known cooling tube supports replacing one or more cooling tubes was a time consuming, two-man job, resulting in excessive down time, undesiable hazard and discomfort to the people doing the job, and frequent damage to good cooling tubes and/or inaccurate positioning of the cooling tubes.
The purpose of the present invention is to provide a cooling tube support that will allow one person to quickly and easily replace one or more cooling tubes and to accurately reposition the tubes a correct distance below the bottom wall of the bushing.